Day: 16/07/2014

What more could you ask for in a restaurant than large female robots, ninja costumes and gold urinals? You’ll find all of the above at Tokyo’s Robot Restaurant.

The neon-flashing, techno-blasting eatery opened two years in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district at a reported cost of about $10 million. And with a $35 entry fee as well as a dress code, admission can be selective.

But Japanese yuppies and college students find the cost worthwhile to watch bikini-clad women direct battles between large female robots while stage hands dressed as ninjas assist offstage. Everyone wins at the Robot Restaurant.

The mighty Thor, that symbol of masculinity, aggression, violence and war, is going to be a woman. And it makes total sense.

Marvel announced the upcoming female incarnation of the character on The View Tuesday morning. The reaction was swift and, in many cases, far too negative. “I love women who kick add but Thor’s a dude,” [sic] wrote one Twitter user. “Marvel comics being stupid,” announced another. And then there’s this, from a Marvel editor:

Was just called a gay slur and told to get cancer because of the Thor news. Go Internet!

Here’s the deal: Marvel Comics has long borrowed Norse mythology for many of its beloved characters and plots. That’s free intellectual property, after all. But the comics are only inspired by Norse mythology, and they’ve almost never followed the stories line-for-line (and even if they did, mythology suffers from…

That’s an interesting way to refocus the prisoners. Not sure whether that’s going to help offenders for violence and assault, but having a goal to work towards can have positive impacts, even if it’s almost literally a fight for their lives.

That’s an interesting way to refocus the prisoners. Not sure whether that’s going to help offenders for violence and assault, but having a goal to work towards can have positive impacts, even if it’s almost literally a fight for their lives.

Okay…what? There’s doting, and there’s overkill. I’m not sure whether to be amazed or appalled by the lengths that this father has gone to for his daughter. A wish to be a princess is usually indulged by costumes and play-acting, not becoming a real one. I hope the guy raises his daughter not to be spoiled, because this seems way too overboard.

When six-year-old Emily asked her father if she could be a real princess, Virginia resident Jeremiah Heaton took his daughter’s wish quite literally. No tiaras, frilly dresses or distant Disney dreams for this little girl. Heaton gave her the real deal, or at least, is trying to — the royal title of princess, complete with land for her to rule, in an 800-square-mile patch of desert in the Middle of Nowhere, Africa.

Heaton searched the Internet for terra nullius, or unclaimed land, and received permission from Egyptian authorities to visit a plot of land roughly half the size of Connecticut between Egypt and Sudan. Locals call the area Bir Tawil, a land unclaimed by its neighbors after a discrepancy in borders drawn in 1899 and 1902. But Heaton and his family call it “Kingdom of North Sudan,” ruled by King Heaton and Princess Emily after he planted a homemade…